


a plague of flowers

by aliferlia



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 14:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliferlia/pseuds/aliferlia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three offerings of flowers meet with varying degrees of success. Also, it's snowing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a plague of flowers

**Notes**

This was originally going to be a very loosely connected series of Valentine’s Day drabbles, except then colorpsychedelic provided me with a plot bunny that…somehow ended up unifying the three stories I wanted to tell? It’s pure unadulterated Valentine’s Day fluff, nothing more. MOSTLY I JUST WANT HAL AND ROYSTON TO TOUCH EACH OTHER A LOT, also Laure is best pony goodbye.

**A Plague of Flowers**

**LAURE**

The day began like any other: loudly, and with a wild-eyed bundle of panic crushing me to death.

‘Gaeth’s at the door!’ the aforementioned bundle of panic hissed into my face. ‘Laure, Laure, Laure, Gaeth’s at the door!’

‘That rhymes,’ I mumbled: shoved him off, rolled over, because it was fucking cold. ‘’M asleep. Go ’way.’

‘You don’t understand!’ it wailed. ‘He has _flowers_!’

‘Your face has flowers.’

I guess I was kind of asking to have the blankets ripped off me after that. The wash-jug of water to the nose was probably overkill, but hey, this was Toverre: kid never skimps on the drama if he can help it. Having tried and failed to box his ears (not my fault he moves like a cat in a fucking bag when he’s panicky), I wrapped the blankets around myself and traipsed across the room to answer the door with what little dignity as I could scrape together.

Fortunately, Gaeth was pink as a sugar pig and seemed to have tracked his dignity in all over the floor together with about half the snowdrifts in Thremedon, so at least we matched - and hey, with Toverre clinging frantically to my shoulders and hopping from foot to foot, the three of us could’ve hit the road and headed off to a national dignity-abandoning convention to take first prize.

‘Morning, Gaeth,’ I sighed. ‘That’s a lovely shade of brick red you’ve got going there. Did Toverre slam the door in your face, or -?’

‘He did,’ Gaeth admitted, but without rancour. Poor kid’s hair was plastered down all over his face with melting snow. Coupled with the very patriotic Volstovic red of his cheeks, it wasn’t his best look. ‘I was only coming to say good morning.’

‘Liar!’ Toverre accused him, and stabbed a shaking finger over my shoulder. ‘You _say_ that, but what are _those_?’

Gaeth considered the soggy bundle in his hands, as though to be sure. ‘Flowers,’ he pronounced, after a few moments.

‘I can confirm that they are, in fact, flowers,’ I put in, helpfully.

‘I just thought Toverre might like them. Because of today. I just - oh, wait, I didn’t say - hmm.’ He paused: nodded to himself, took a deep breath. ‘They’re for you,’ he explained to Toverre, and held them out.

Blame the fact that I hadn’t had much in the way of caffeine for me not realising what was going on until right that second. ‘Ah, crap,’ I said, because there was no way this was going to end well.

And, sure enough: ‘It’s the middle of winter,’ Toverre pointed out, acidly, irrationally. His sharp little nails tightened in my shoulders. ‘If you think I’m _stupid_ enough to believe that you got me _flowers_ in the middle of _winter_ \- obviously this is all some kind of, of elaborate joke, or a dream, or -’

‘I have a friend who grows them,’ Gaeth said, going pinker than ever. I stared, fascinated. It would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so tragic. ‘They’re magic. Look.’ He offered them again. They were pretty nice flowers, if you like that sort of thing. Roses, all fresh and dewy, like out of a damn poem. I whistled, impressed. ‘Oh! I can get some for you, too, if you’d like,’ he added to me, earnestly. ‘You’ve been such a good friend to me - I don’t want you to feel left out! Except -’

‘Yeah, thanks, but no thanks,’ I said, and gave him a rousing clap on the shoulder. Didn’t do him much good, but then again, I don’t think anything short of a stiff double of Adamo’s best brandy could’ve helped him just then. ‘Hey, Toverre! Take the nice boy’s flowers and say thank you.’

Toverre flinched. Slowly, he reached out and took the flowers into his arms. He stared at them a long moment. Twice he looked up and opened his mouth as though to speak. No words came. After a period of silence that I was fast beginning to find truly awful, his entire face went violently, instantly red, and he started to shake. That was the opposite of good. ‘Oh, for _goodness_ ’ sake,’ he stammered, eyes wide, lips trembling, ‘that’s just - this is completely - don’t be _ridiculous_ , Gaeth!’

And taking the flowers, he shoved past me, past Gaeth, and went striding away down the blustery corridor trailing bedsheets like a cloak.

Gaeth drooped.

‘I think went quite well, actually,’ I started to say, but he hiccupped. ‘Fuck. Hey, are you - alright?’

He sniffed. ‘I just wanted to say, if he wanted to - if he wanted to come to the pub with me this evening, that would be nice,’ he said. ‘I - yes.’ He stood there a moment longer, pursing his lips and blinking, as though trying very hard to recall lines he had memorised. ‘Have a good morning, Miss Laure,’ he told me at last: gave a little bow, turned and walked away rapidly.

The wind howled down the corridor. Old scar in my palm tingled. I put it to my mouth and gnawed on it absently. This was going to get so awkward, so fast.

**HAL**

I had a dream, once, several years before ever I met Royston, of a beautiful book. The heavy cover was worked with the silver figures of birds and men and stars in the Ramanthine fashion, set here and there with wings of mother-of-pearl. I can still see it as clearly as I see my pen before me now, feel the pleasing weight of it in my palm. Written onto the pages using the blackest ink were the lines of a particular verse I had been struggling with for the better part of a week. In my dream, I spoke the words aloud, and was relieved to find that I could read them clear and sweet and full of purpose, just as the poetry desired me to: but as soon as the words left my lips, the beautiful book crumbled away into nothing.

I remember that dream because it was the sort you don’t expect to have in real life, the sort that is so clear and so full of meaning that it seems like something out of a fairytale, all portents and prophecies. At the time, I was struggling to teach myself to read Ramanthine poetry, and while I loved what few crumbs of it I could decipher with a deep and abiding passion, I was terrified at the thought that my learning would never progress, and that I would spend all the rest of my life in a small grey room, chewing stubbornly over the same few ancient phrases until all savour was gone from them, and my life wasted in bitterness.

It didn’t turn out that way at all, of course, because I had the great fortune to find a teacher. There is nothing to say of him that I haven’t thought a thousand times before, wrenchingly and clumsily and embarrassingly. I think such _stupid_ things about him, sometimes, such stupid childish fairytale things. I can barely voice them to myself, let alone to him. He is a strange and marvellous man, cynical and disillusioned and weary one moment, heroic and impractical and full of wild magic the next. He can say such wonderful things, such beautiful things, all in the same breath as hating himself and half of Thremedon.

None of this excused the roses.

I don’t think I’ve ever been overly concerned with the opinions of strangers: they’re welcome to their ways. Certainly a pile of very red roses on my desk was a little more than I’d bargained for, and the stares as I hurried across the snowy campus were unpleasant, but I was so preoccupied that I barley paid them any mind. My hands were shaking. It wasn’t at all the embarrassment: it was only knowing that I have no such knack for grandeur. I hadn’t even thought to buy him anything, or do anything special for him. I could barely even pluck up the courage to explain what he meant to me in anything more than a handful of stumbling words every now and then, and here he had sent me _roses_ : and better than that, words written just for me.

Even now, I still remember the book from that dream: and I learn afresh every day the quiet frustration of holding a thing so clearly in your mind, so sharply in your heart, and being unable to speak it out. I have seen Royston take up a page of poetry quite unknown to him and speak it out into a clever translation given barely a minute’s worth of thought, where I would have had to stumble through three dictionaries for a good two hours to produce something half so polished. I would rather stay silent than risk mistranslating a word: rather never speak again than turn a poem I love for its grace and power into something clumsy.

By the time I had pushed through the wind and the snow and trailed what felt like all the mud in the world into Adamo’s office, I was very cold and very hot all at once, not to mention completely out of breath. I stood there with three dozen roses in my arms and snow in my hair and looked imploringly at Adamo: who set down his pen and leaned back from his desk.

‘Kid,’ he said, mouth twitching just the littlest bit, ‘if you’ve come here to make a confession of undying love, then I’m afraid that for a whole host of very compelling reasons, the answer’s going to be no.’

‘Oh,’ I said, helplessly, ‘oh - no, no, of course not, I only - you see I just - he’s gone and sent me all these roses, and it’s very lovely, but it’s not _practical_ , you see, not at all, and I only thought - well -’

‘A vase?’ he suggested.

I think I very nearly sagged with relief. ‘Yes,’ I puffed: ‘that.’

Shaking his head in what I had the horrible feeling was amusement, he stood up, stretching, and went to rummage around in the storage cabinets behind the door. ‘I thought I saw a pair of bailiffs go traipsing up the steps with those,’ he said as he searched, nodding over the frosty window. ‘Should’ve known it was Roy pulling his crap again. Well, you’re the one who took up with a madman. It’s only to be expected.’ Having found what looked horribly like an old metal spittoon, he levelled a fearsome glance at me. ‘You don’t _mind_ him sending you flowers and whatnot, do you?’ he checked. ‘Because Roy _means_ well, certainly, but he’s also not exactly grounded in reality - if it bothers you, you’ll need to tell him straight out -’

‘It doesn’t bother me,’ I hastened to assure him. ‘Of course it doesn’t. It’s lovely. It’s just - it’s only -’ I stopped, feeling utterly useless and very silly. I shook my head and got snow everywhere: gave a great sigh. ‘I’m an idiot, that’s all,’ I said.

‘Bastion _fuck_ ,’ a voice from behind me announced in dire tones. As one, Adamo and I turned to see Laure standing in the door with a devilish grin on her face. ‘You, too? It’s like a bloody plague of flowers.’

‘Yes, one would almost think that today were a special flower-giving occasion of some kind,’ I half snapped, distractedly, so that both she and Adamo laughed. They had very similar laughs: great roars of delight, the both of them, rarely elicited but cheering to see.

Laure tramped inside and took the spittoon from Adamo, not at all perturbed, and went to the window, returned with a large wad of greyish-yellow snow in one red hand. ‘There we go,’ she said, depositing snow in spittoon and holding it out to me. ‘Vase. C’mon, Hal. Flower me up.’ Her grin turned wicked as I worked the stems inside. ‘There’s a deflowering joke in here somewhere, I know it.’

To my dismay, I actually squeaked, and could feel myself turning bright red. She cackled and shoved the flowers at me, reached up to ruffle my hair. I had six inches and nearly three years on her, and still she ploughed through me.

‘Be kind to him, you little terror,’ Adamo warned her, going back to his desk. ‘There any particular reason you’re in here, other than to be a foul-mouthed smartarse?’

‘’Scuse _you_ , I’m here to collect your marking,’ she said. ‘Unless you feel like reading two hundred essays by a bunch of babies who can’t spell their own names, _sir_ , I suggest you make with the sweet-talk.’

‘Not a chance,’ he said, and hefted a stack of papers into her waiting arms. ‘Sooner sweet-talk my great-aunt’s hairy arse than you, and don’t you forget it. I’m already standing you dinner tonight, ’cause that’s just how nice I am. Mark your damn papers and I might even say thanks after.’

‘Flowers or nothing,’ she shot back, sounding quite pleased with herself, three pounds of essay notwithstanding. ‘I mean it! Toverre gets flowers, Hal gets flowers - do I get flowers? It’s downright rude, is what it is. It is a crying _shame_ that someone as all-round upstanding as me - _me_! - should be deprived of what I think is my inalienable _right_ to lug dead plants around -’

I was fast beginning to feel superfluous: clutching my pot of roses, I inched quietly towards the door. They were enjoying their argument so much they barely noticed me go. ‘Lugging dead plants around my _arse_ , you ungrateful -’ was the last thing I heard, in rumbly, grudging, delighted tones. I closed the door and set off back to the library.

The wind had let up a little, so that the walk through the chill was bracing but not too terrible: the wrought-iron lace along all the balconies and tall silver-edged trees glittered white in the faint afternoon sunlight, so that for once the dreary grey slush looked almost lovely. I clamped the cold tips of my fingers around the silver vase and cradled it tight against my chest, never caring who saw or who pointed. I shed little spots of rosy colour behind me as I walked. The scent of them in the bitter air was heady and sweet and almost overwhelming. Oh, they must have been so expensive! Even the smallest bunch of magically-reared freesias or stargazers during the wintertime would have been an extravagance. I loved them so.

I settled back into my quiet corner behind the far shelves, my roses right next to my papers. I didn’t care how foolish they looked, or what kind of glances I got from the occasional lost student wandering through the stacks. They were mine, and they were awful and expensive and much better than I warranted: so beautiful, and so silly, and so very Royston. I couldn’t focus on my translations at all. Every second line made me think of him, and of the petals dropping slow and quiet as blood onto the backs of my hands. I wanted so very badly to leave this place, to find him and speak with him, to explain to him - but I could not.

I must have started five separate letters to him in response to the one that he had written me. It was always that way. For every clear, measured word that he spoke, I wasted ten hesitant stammered sentences. I could spill my heart messily all over a page, and he would be there with his feelings mapped out in strong-scanned poetry. It would never be enough. I would never speak it out. I could only sit there in silence as the snow fell, as my roses fell, and stare at a blank page.

**LAURE**

Luckily we didn’t have classes till later in the day. Toverre would’ve been a wreck if he’d had to sit through eight o’ clock History of the Ramanthe. By the time we managed to haul ourselves up for our afternoon sessions - him to his Early Modern Volstovic Lit class, me to the little cubbyhole of an office across the hall from Adamo’s, where I helped mark his first-years’ essays on military organisation - we were both a bit frazzled. The snow hadn’t helped.

‘He got me _flowers_ ,’ Toverre had spent the better part of the morning wailing, ‘ _flowers_ , Laure, what am I supposed to - oh, he’s too wonderful! Ugh, he’s just - did you see how he was _blushing_? Oh, he’s _too_ precious!’ He moved to touch one of the roses again: reverently, with just the very tip of a finger. ‘Look how lovely they are,’ he said. His tone was approaching the besotted. Thought it was bad how he’d spent the better part of a year mooning. Apparently this was going to be worse. ‘They’re so perfect! Grown in a magical hothouse - oh, I do love the city! No nasty insects or scale like _ordinary_ flowers.’

‘Were you there for the part where you slammed the door in his face and then _literally_ gave him the cold shoulder?’ I asked, and then regretted

‘Do you suppose - oh, well, that - that must have looked quite bad,’ he mused.

‘You think?’

‘Oh, and I didn’t even say thank you! Oh, how awful of me! He must think I’m terribly bad-mannered. Do you think I should write a thank-you note?’

So that was how that started. He was still doodling his notes when I yelled goodbye in his ear and shoved him up the icy stairs to his tiny little Lit classroom at the top of one of the south towers. I wandered off and collected my marking from Owen, having first laughed my arse off at poor Hal’s scads of bloody great roses. Think we chased him off eventually: we stopped arguing, started talking about this one paper he had to present in the seminar he’d been coaxed into holding next week. I like his office, always have, with its dark panelling and heaps of old junk left by occupants across the years, so I didn’t mind staying there, even if it meant the pack of papers in my arms was getting kind of heavy. He’s probably my favourite person, and I don’t mind admitting it.

‘You’re presenting the one on Ke-Han aerial defence?’ I asked. ‘I liked that one. It was good.’

‘Thank you, professor,’ he snapped at me. He’d been doing that smiley thing he does with his eyes the whole time we’d been talking. I don’t think anyone else really sees he does it, ’cause everyone else talks about what a hardass he is. Yeah, sure, the guy could probably kill me with his bare hands if he felt like it - he rode dragons into _war_ , he rode fucking _Proudmouth_ , nothing like my babygirl Inglory, beauty though she is - he’s tough as nails and probably the best man I know, but if you can’t see that past all that he’s got a heart soft as damn taffy then you’re blind as a fucking mole. ‘Go away and do your marking.’

‘I get to come, right?’ I pressed, grinning like mad. ‘I’ll sit right in the front row. Ask a bunch of really obnoxious questions and everything. Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you. Won’t make you look too foolish.’

I expected him to cuss me out like he always does, expected him to call me a rude little miss with a head full of ego and get tired of me, boot me out like I probably deserved, but all he did was laugh. ‘Ah, hell, Laure,’ he said, ‘I hope you’re always going to be in the front row making me feel foolish. Day I let you win an argument is the day I really am an idiot.’

He didn’t even say it like he was being that sincere: just like, you know, like you’d say to a friend, like a normal not-crazy person. Except, me being me and having no actual tact whatsofuckingever, I just had to go and say, ‘I hope I always am, too.’ And I don’t fucking know why, or how it happened, but my voice got _way_ too sincere, like I actually _meant_ it, and next thing our eyes locked over the desk, _locked_ like magnets, and suddenly my face was getting hot and there was this weird metallic taste in my mouth.

He smiled. I fucking hated his smile. On anyone else it would’ve been a battle-mad sneer. I wanted to punch him in the face. I looked away. Fucking hated feeling like this. Couldn’t stand it. Didn’t make any fucking _sense_ , also it was stupid as fuck. I’d dealt with it and I’d taken the blow and I’d kept going. I didn’t need it again now.

 ‘You better send me those flowers, old man,’ I told him, loudly. My voice croaked a bit. It wasn’t right. It was all - complicated, suddenly, the way I’d been fighting for months to keep it from getting. I pretty much ran out of the office after that: stalked back across the hallway and into the little cubbyhole.

My heart was beating like mad. I slapped at my cheeks, puffed out a breath. If he’d been anyone else I’d’ve just said it, months and months ago. Never saw any point in fucking about with that kind of thing. You like someone, you come right out and say it, whether you want to marry them or tumble them for a night or whatever happens in between. Sitting in a corner pining’s not going to do you any good. With Owen, though - hell. One of the first things he tried to teach us in Advanced Terrain Analysis was to know when to cut your losses, know when to pull back. I disagreed, I think. I think I told him there was never a reason to stop fighting for what you want. That’s ’cause I was a dumb kid. There’s a damn good reason to stop fighting for what you want, and it’s what you want being twice your age and your professor to boot.

’Course, I didn’t get more than halfway into marking like my third fucking paper before the door slammed open and Toverre burst in, white-faced and frantic. I started to stand up, ready to cuss him into shape good and proper like he sometimes needs, but then I saw his eyes. ‘It has to be right!’ he blurted out, lips trembling, and threw half-a-dozen twists of messy notepaper onto the little writing-desk: ‘I have to get it _right_ and I can’t, I can’t write it _right_!’ and then he was in the corner and crying frantically.

After an awful silent moment, I sighed. Seeing nothing else for it, I crossed the room: carefully settled myself down against the wall at his side. It was cold as fuck, but I didn’t mind. ‘Alright, kid,’ I said, softly. ‘Alright.’ I hesitated a second, having learnt how to do this from long practice. ‘You fine with me touching you, or d’you want to be by yourself for a while? I can leave you in here, nice and safe, and go get us some coffee or something. No one’ll bother you.’

He shook his head, brief and tight. His poor cold fingers flexed and flexed. After a long moment, he said, ‘You can touch me if you want to.’

I settled an arm round his shoulders, nice and slow and gentle, like he was a horse that got spooked. Happens to everyone now and then: I guess it just happens to him more than others. Sometimes he needs me to swear at him. Sometimes he needs me to sit by him and not say anything. This time, he needed to sit rigid and trembling in the circle of my arm for a long while. I rubbed at his shoulder with a careful thumb.

‘What if he hates me?’ he asked, at last, and relaxed into my touch the littlest bit. ‘I’ve been trying so hard to do it right, to write a, a _proper_ thank-you note, but what if - what if he’s just trying to make fun of me? Everyone’s always just trying to make fun of me. What if -’

‘If he’s making fun of you, I’ll kick his arse out to Nevers and back,’ I told him, and pulled him the littlest bit closer. Shaking like a damn cat. ‘Look, I know that - I know you’re used to boys being awful to you, but you gotta stop - you gotta stop getting defensive every time somebody tries to be nice to you.’

‘No one’s ever nice to me.’

‘ _I’m_ nice to you, you enormous wuss,’ I snapped, still stroking his shoulder. ‘I nearly fucking married you, that’s how _nice_ I am to you. Gaeth’s so Bastion-damned nice to you he bought you fucking flowers and asked you out to dinner. Get your head out of your arse, you great loony.’

‘Language, Laure!’ he murmured, sounding quite shocked: and then all of a sudden he was leaning into me and snuggling close with his head on my breast, the way he used to when we were younger. He put his thin arms around my waist and was still. I rolled my eyes and gave him a squeeze. Absolute idiot. ‘What do you mean, he asked me out to dinner?’ he asked, very softly, like he was trying not to get his hopes up.

I frowned. ‘What, did you not get that part? I must’ve told you four times this morning, ’cept you were too busy faffing around with damn thank-you notes to listen.’ He shrugged. I squinted down at him. His cheeks had gone red all over again. ‘Look, forget the notes, alright? Life’s too short for damn love-letters. We’ll find him when we get home and we’ll explain, and then you will go the hell out with that poor boy and put him out of his misery. Understood?’

He nodded, his curls tickling the underside of my chin. I should’ve just gotten myself a kitten years ago. Marginally less fuss, plus no sobbing over boys every second week. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, demurely, and then, ‘You’re an awful tomboy, Laure, but I do quite like you sometimes.’

Kittens aren’t as damn sweet, though, I suppose. Little fucker. ‘Don’t be disgusting, you damn twerp,’ I told him, just to keep him in line.

He only laughed, quietly, shakily. ‘Wait, do you mean -?’ he began, and then sat up, the better to look at me. His expression had turned sly. ‘Do you mean that he asked me out to dinner like darling Balfour asks us all out to dinner and you all talk dragon and Luvander’s the only sensible man willing to discuss a bit of opera, or do you mean - he asked me out to dinner like the professor asks you out and you pretend to talk dragon except then you just stare at each other piningly?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I told him, with what dignity I still liked to pretend I had. ‘Plus piningly’s not even a word.’

’Course that wasn’t so true like two seconds later when Owen’s little surprise showed up.

‘Fucking _daisies_?’

**ADAMO**

It was blue dusk already by the time I’d finally finished up. Never in my life thought I’d end up pushing papers, not even in my old age, and here I was already tied to a damn desk job for the second year in a row, try as I  had to fight it after all the political ructions at the end of last year. The cold was in my bones worse than ever that evening. Somehow it was harder to bear in peacetime, down here in this Bastion-damned city we all of us fought so hard for, than it had ever been away in the Cobalts or way up high on Proudmouth. I’d take dragonfire and gunpowder any day over the sleet and the hail. The lights of Thremedon were spread out below me, pretty as a box of sugared violets and twice as sickening. I bowed my head into the wind, thinking of anything but flowers, and set off, pushing my way past the last lingering students and out into the dark of the winter city.

I wasn’t halfway down the ’Versity steps when I saw standing in the light of a window none other than young Balfour. Seeing him brought back all that damn bitterness. I didn’t grudge him his dragon, not a bit, but I’ll be honest: there wasn’t a lot I wouldn’t give to have three more days with my old girl, easy though she’s resting now. He was deep in conversation with someone else I didn’t recognise till I got close: Gaeth, kid who gave his girl that fool of a flower name. _Bastion fucking take all your fucking flowers_ , I thought. Wasn’t sitting too high in my own esteem just then.

‘Balfour!’ I called, suddenly please to see him: it had been a few weeks, and hell, I worried, in my own way. He turned.

‘I was supposed to be meeting a, a colleague,’ I said, not liking to look Balfour in the eye. ‘Think they might have found other plans, though. You, ah - you got anything special planned for tonight? Little lady stashed away somewhere?’ I charitably didn’t say _little gentleman_ , though I wouldn’t have been surprised either way, but Roy taught me long ago not to ask after what’s not your business.

Balfour gave a nervous little laugh: flexed his fingers with the faintest whirr of cogs. Like always, I tried not to stare at them. It had taken me some getting used to the idea that beneath those gloves, they weren’t flesh at all: still can’t imagine how he feels about ’em, new dragon’s name notwithstanding. ‘I, ah, no,’ he said, giving me that tight little smile of his. ‘I thought I’d just, well. Stay in and write some letters.’

There it was. ‘Thom?’ I asked. ‘How’s he managing? Haven’t heard from him in a while, actually.’

I saw how Balfour flinched at the name. Yeah, good luck carrying that torch. I never figured out whatever it was old Rook and Thom ended up getting themselves into, even after they told me about the whole crazy being brothers thing, but from what little I understood about that relationship, it was about twelve exciting flavours of fucked up and too tight-knit to let anyone else in between them. ‘He’s alright,’ he said, tightly.

I dropped it, having trodden on enough toes already for one day, and turned to Gaeth. ‘You doing alright over there, lad?’ I asked him. Not the brightest of chaps, but good-hearted, from what I know of him, and strong, even if he doesn’t say much.

‘I am,’ he said, seriously. ‘Balfour cheered me up.’ He gave Balfour a slightly dazzling smile. Don’t know how you get that many teeth in one mouth, to be honest. ‘Thank you,’ he said to Balfour, and then, quite startlingly, gave him a long, solemn hug. ‘Have a good evening,’ he told him, seeming not to mind Balfour looking distinctly nonplussed. ‘You too, Adamo, sir.’

He turned to leave, then stopped dead, his mouth going very round, his eyes very wide. I turned to see Laure and Toverre, walking arm-in-arm down the snowy steps, and with them Hal, who was still labouring under his pot of wilted roses. I was starting to feel distinctly hemmed in by the amount of happy coincidences taking place just about then - although I figured that logically, it was a pretty small campus, and we all came this way to get home. Still, I didn’t like it. My eyes slid right over to Laure’s before I could stop myself, worse even than it had been in my office, than it had been for months now. Her hair in the light from the window was like dragonfire: the sight of her hit me like a bullet. Looked away quick as I could, feeling seven different kinds of guilty, with a nice topping of something a lot like shame. Hadn’t felt that in years. I really was an old fool.

‘Oh,’ said Hal, spitting rose petals out into the snow and looking relieved. ‘Balfour, it’s so nice to see you! How are you?’

‘I’m - I’m well,’ Balfour said. ‘You look roses, I mean well, I mean - goodness, Hal, where did you _get_ those?’

‘Long story,’ I grumbled. I hadn’t missed the way Gaeth was staring at Laure’s little chirping cricket of a notboyfriend, Toverre or whatever the fuck he called himself. Least memorable kid in the whole of Thremedon, to my mind. ‘Quite frankly, I’m fucking sick of all these damn flowers.’

‘I can - oh, come, Hal, let me carry them a little way,’ Balfour offered, hurrying to take them from him. ‘Are you heading home? I can help you halfway there. You poor thing - I think they’re heavier than you are -’

They set off into the dark, leaving the rest of us alone with our awkwardness. Fanfuckingtastic. Felt like we were all being paired off at the end of a damn street-play. Gaeth was still staring at the cricket, and the cricket was still staring back at Gaeth, and that was one tangle of adolescent stupidity I just didn’t even have time for.

‘Hey,’ I said, out of the corner of my mouth, ‘lad - do me a favour and take your friend away for a drink or something? Can’t be having with you two staring at each other all night, or we’ll be up to our arses in snow before long. Place down the road’s got a special for couples tonight.’

And, ‘Yes,’ Gaeth said, like he completely missed the point of talking quiet-like under your breath, ‘yes, I know. I asked Toverre there this morning. I don’t know if he said yes or not.’

‘Oh, Bastion take the both of you,’ I snapped, and gave Gaeth a shove. ‘You! Cricket! Get the fuck out of my hair, alright? Life’s too damn short for this bullshit.’

‘I can’t,’ the cricket yelped, and Bastion _fuck_ , it was snowing again and the lights were flickering and nobody fucking _cared_ ,‘I don’t - pubs are _awful_ , Gaeth, you can’t expect me to -’ Laure kicked him ‘- ow! Laure, that was very mean, you’re never going to find a husband if you don’t stop _kicking_ people -’

And that was when Gaeth took him quite firmly by the ears and kissed him.

I said, ‘Oh, for _crying_ out loud,’ and looked away, because believe me, I’d seen all I’d ever wanted to of that thanks to Royston’s debauched ’Versity years. That, and you learn some shit in the army, not to mention the fucking Dragon Corps. Damn, but I could tell you stories.

‘Hey, it shut him up,’ Laure pointed out.

‘Almost worth it,’ I muttered, massaging the corner of my temple. ‘Too old for this bullshit, is what I am. Oi! You two! Break it up.’

They complied. ‘Come with me,’ Gaeth suggested. ‘Just for a bit. We can leave if you don’t like it. But I think you’re beautiful and I want to hold your hand for a while, so come with me.’

Swear it was the longest I ever heard the lad speak all together like that, and he looked faintly concussed by the end of it Still, it did the trick. The cricket fairly grabbed him and hauled him off down the street.

That left just me and Laure.

She stood there waiting, cheeks dark in the cold, bright hair tangled with snow. I swallowed. Crazy old fool, is why: useless madman that I am. ‘So, you gonna come talk to me, or what?’ she asked: rubbed the back of her glove across her nose, which was red as her cheeks and raw. ‘Like as not we’re both gonna end up sick as dogs from this damn weather. Might as well get some good conversation out of it by way of compensation.’

‘Not sure my conversation qualifies as good, to be honest,’ I admitted: shoved my hands into my pockets, shuffled my feet.

‘I like it fine.’

‘Got shit taste, then.’

She looked up at me, straight and frank and direct, eyes narrowing like they always did right before she was about to ask some smart-as-eggs question that turned my whole worldview on its head: ’cept this time she didn’t say anything, just watched me with those steady piercing eyes, waited for me to speak. I had no idea what I was supposed to say, and the weiredest feeling like if I got it wrong, I’d have - disappointed her, somehow. Snow kept falling. She never even moved. I had the weirdest feeling like if I listened real close, I would’ve heard dragon wings just then, and the air raid siren sounding at four in the morning to wake me up out of my nice soft bed into warfire and red heartache.

‘Sorry about the flowers,’ I said, finally, though I knew that wasn’t right. Better to risk a long shot than do nothing at all. ‘I panicked. Blame Roy’s bad influence. He’s the one who’s good at -’ I paused, swallowed ‘- _gestures_.’

She shook her head. ‘You unbearable tosser,’ she said, her hair blazing in the light from the window. ‘See, now, at least when he’s stupid, he’s his own brand of stupid. Probably when you fuck up, you should - you know, fuck up your own way. That make sense?’ I said nothing. She laughed. ‘Dunno why the fuck I’m trying to give you life advice,’ she remarked. ‘I’m - you know. Half your age, all that. Don’t know anything yet. Give a girl one dragon and she thinks she knows everything.’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘You got shit taste in conversational partners, maybe, but you - your instincts are good. You know that. I’d take advice from you over half the assholes in charge of this city.’

She raised an eyebrow at that: but then I think she saw I was being sincere, and subsided, looked away, shrugged. ‘I don’t think I’ve got shit taste,’ she said, simply, and that was it. I don’t know why, but it was. Felt like all the bones of my chest had been unlaced. I’d had my hands clenched and hadn’t even realised it: now they fell open. She made me weak in stupid ways, and I think she hated it as much as I did. ‘The whole world can’t be Hal and the margrave, alright?’ she added, after a long moment. ‘Can’t be Toverre and Gaeth. It’s not all - we can’t be like them. They got lucky. It’s more complicated than that.’

I held my breath.  I’d learned my lesson about speaking when I shouldn’t. I was waiting, empty hands and all.

‘And don’t you go silent on me, either, old man!’ she went on, warningly. ‘Fucking sick of pussyfooting around this, to be quite honest. You don’t get to send me fucking daisies and then act like you didn’t.’

‘Fine,’ I said, because this was it, now this was the moment, with words not flowers: everyday boring words, nothing pretty or showy, just saying how things were. ‘You want it out there? I care for you. You know it, and I know it: now it’s said.’

She let out a breath, quirked the corner of her lips. ‘If that would’ve helped it, I’d’ve said it months ago,’ she said. ‘I don’t - I can’t see a way of fixing it, that’s all. Not now, not really. I’m not sad about it, ’cause that’s a waste of time. Just: I don’t like problems I can’t solve.’

The lines of her face were drawn sharp and fierce as a blade. I’d almost forgotten the snowfall. She had a smell to her like fire and copper, the smell everyone who’s spent any significant time around a dragon gets. I’d know it in my sleep. I lifted my open palm and set it against her cheek. I did it because I had to: there was no other way. It wasn’t a tender touch: I’ve held dying soldiers more gently than I held her then. It was simply a sign of faith between comrades. She lifted her face and looked up at me. I felt her jaw move under the tips of my fingers. Her eyes in the light were luminous as dawn.

‘Said I’d stand you dinner,’ I said, quietly as I knew how.  We stood close together in the cold, after all. ‘I can manage that much, at least.’ I bowed my head and kissed the top of her hair, brief and unsentimental. You can’t win every war. I don’t even remember who taught me that anymore. Might have had to figure it out myself. Might have been Proudmouth who said it to me. Been a long time and a lot of wars.

‘You bet your geriatric _arse_ you are buying me dinner,’ she said, though she made no move to leave the shelter of my arms. ‘You try to back out of that and so help me, I will mug you here and now and treat my damn self.’

I put my forehead to hers a moment: then stepped away. She wasn’t going to be my peace: I hadn’t ever expected her to be, wouldn’t have wanted her to be. She was glory all on her own, blazing like a fallen empire, and it was a privilege to stand at her side. ‘You actually would, though,’ I marvelled. ‘Good thing we got you a dragon, or you’d’ve been locked away for petty larceny right now.’

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I’d never’ve been caught for that shit. Probably I’d’ve punched some fucker out soon enough.’

I snorted: turned from her, began to stride away into the snow. She hurried to catch up, folding her hands behind her back like a boy, pacing alongside me. ‘I ever tell you about the time Roy got us both arrested, couple days after we graduated?’ I asked. ‘Ended up with me in a dress - I shit you not - and him being charged with kidnapping.’

The corners of her mouth twitched up. It was like watching a candleflame rise up in fits and starts after a gust of heavy wind. Her eyes found mine. ‘Bullshit,’ she said. ‘What colour was the dress? Green? It’d bring out your eyes, you know. Toverre says green’s good for that.’

‘Don’t listen to the cricket,’ I said, and bumped her shoulder with mine. ‘Red’s always been my colour.’

She blinked. After a moment, she took my arm. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I can see that. Right, so go on about the dress. Were you wearing heels?’

**HAL**

Balfour handed the roses back to me as we stood on the doorstep of Royston’s tower, huddled against the wind and kicking our feet in the snow. ‘It’s simply - well,’ he was saying, plucking at the tips of his gloves. ‘I’m starting to find that putting things on paper isn’t always as easy as I’d like. I always think that writing things down would be far simpler than having to say them, except then whenever I sit down to write them out my words get all tangled up anyway. So there’s really no solution to it, as far as I can see.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘I do. I truly do.’

He looked at me a moment, face pinched with unhappiness, and I saw quite clearly that he wanted to say _no_ , _no you don’t: he is right there, at the top of these stairs, and not far away and with someone else_. Then he looked again at the roses, and how silly and pitifully small I must have looked trying to cling to them, and said, with softness, ‘Look at us, moping like this when half the rest of the city’s out partying, snow be damned.’

‘You could stay and have dinner with us,’ I suggested. I’ve always liked him, ever since he was kind to me in the Airman when Thom dragged me along that awful day when they locked me out of the Basquiat, and I hated to think of anyone alone.

At my offer, he reached out as though to touch my shoulder, and in the lull of the wind we both heard quite clearly the whirr of the cogs in his hands. It was a strange, listing moment for both of us, and he caught his hand back as though it had had him: mouth flinching, nostrils flaring.

I wanted very badly to hug him, and said so. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?’ I pressed. ‘Royston always loves company, even if there’s no food. He’s quite happy to sit and argue at anybody for hours, so long as I slip him the occasional cup of coffee.’

He managed a smile. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Don’t be silly. You get inside and keep warm. We’ll have to have a lunch date sometime next week, don’t you think?’

I agreed that we certainly would have to, and waved him away into the night, watching after him with a sense of kinship. The cold metal of the vase burned my neck, and so I began to stagger upstairs, keeping close to the wall and feeling my way through the dimness as best I could. The roses were very nearly dead now: it was only to be expected, after I had dragged them through one of the worst snowstorms I’d ever seen: but they still smelled sweeter and richer than anything else I could ever remember having loved, and I never wanted to let them out of my sight.

Once inside our apartment, I hastened to settle them down on the table and looked about for Royston: for the fire was blazing away in the grate, and several of his books lay open on the table together with a half-finished crystal of amber brandy. My heart was beating very hard. I still had not decided what it was I was going to say.

I found him eventually: asleep in the tall green wingback chair that sits in the corner of his little crook-walled library, several rolls of parchment scattered about his feet. He had drawn the chair up close to the frosty windowpane, perhaps to look out at Thremedon under snow: but his head lolled back against the upholstery, and the heavy brocade mantle that I had bought for him at the beginning of winter as a birthday gift had slipped from his shoulders. I drew it closer around his breast and stooped to kiss his cold forehead. Still he did not wake, though he sighed gently in his sleep. The lines about his eyes were clearly apparent in the firelight. I kissed them, too, which his wakeful vanity had always prevented: he fretted over them in the mirror each morning, and never believed me when I said that I loved them dearly.

I took the volume in his lap into my palms and held it there a moment, looking down at the page. Ramanthine love poetry, of course. My heart ached as I found a scrap of ribbon to mark his place and set the book aside. Kneeling there before him was perfect happiness for me: I could easily have curled up there at his feet and kept watch while he slept for all the rest of my life. I don’t think I could ever have articulated that to him. He would only have said something witty, or else capped a neat line of verse, or gone off on a tangent about the history of the supplicatory pose. I put my face against his knee and closed my eyes. I could still smell the roses everywhere.

He stirred: a drowsy hand moved to touch my hair. ‘Hal?’ he murmured. ‘Love, is that you?’

My heart thrilled. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘It’s me. I’m here.’

He sat up, stretched, pushed two fingers gently to the nape of my neck. I clung to his trousers: pressed my face to the fabric. He stilled. ‘What is it?’

I shook my head. My heart was too full. I wanted to say a thousand brimming things - _thank you_ and _I love you_ and _you are everything_ , each more embarrassing than the last - but I could not. I could barely even bring myself to look up into his waking face lest I undo that, too. Better to be silent than to speak the wrong word: better to close my eyes and cling to him than let him see how my hands shook.

‘Were the roses awful?’ he asked, gently, as he moved his fingers through my hair: I think he was not quite sure yet whether there was something terribly wrong. ‘It was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I know I’m an old fool.’

‘The roses,’ I said, with some heat, ‘were very beautiful, and I loved them terribly, and they’re all half-dead now because it’s snowing, you tremendously silly man, and next time you want to be wonderful and lovely and do stupid things like, like send me _roses_ in the dead of winter, don’t, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to say thank you, or what I’m supposed to do in return to show the whole of Thremedon that I’m yours, or how I’m even supposed to -’ I broke off. I put my face into his trousers again, breathed in the smell of his skin: the camphor in the neat-pressed pinstripe, the fustiness of the old wingback.

Very slowly, he slipped down from the chair so that he was seated on the floor with me. Yawning, for he was still drowsy, he took my cold flushed face into his hands and kissed my forehead: brushed the snow from my hair and eyelashes, rubbed the line of my jaw with his thumbs. I held perfectly still, barely able to breathe. He moved to kiss my eyelids, my temples, the bridge of my nose, the very corner of my jaw: put his hands to my skull and tipped my head back and back so that he could put his mouth against my throat. I swallowed. My lips had parted, dry, and still I could not breathe. He bit gently at the base of my neck, pushed my scarf away so as to kiss at my breastbone: and then, as my chest began to heave, and my hands to shake, pulled away.

‘My poor darling,’ he said, taking my hands between his own and blowing on them to warm them. ‘And your poor darling hands. The roses were nothing. Silly self-indulgence on my part. They’re only roses.’

‘Not to me,’ I said, anxiously, my breathing still ragged, ‘not to me, Royston, you know that: I want to shout it out from half the towers in the city, I want to, to grab perfect strangers by the lapels and explain it to them, to write such words that, oh, that a thousand years from now people will remember us and understand - but I _can’t_ , Royston, I can’t, because I’m only me, and I’m not eloquent or  - and then you go and do something like that, something grand and, and _traditional_ , and I -’ I had to stop, because I was beginning to laugh in my distraction. ‘I’m not a poet. I can’t build words of my own like you can. I can translate - oh, I can translate metaphors and memorise declensions and scan lines, but I can’t - I can’t build roses up out of ink and paper, Royston. Do you see?’

He pressed our foreheads together: got his arms around me properly, wrapped us up in that dark starry mantle. I went willingly to his breast and clung there, kissing at his eyes and his brow and philtrum, the flecks of grey at his temples. His fingers went carefully from one button to the next, easing me out of my clothes, and I did the same for him, until we were both half-naked beneath the mantle and trembling, though not with cold.

‘I don’t care about the rest of Thremedon,’ he said, quite carefully. ‘I don’t care about a thousand years from now. This is our eloquence. This,’ he kissed my neck, ‘is poetry, to me, not to mention all I’d ever care for in immortality.’

I let out a frustrated laugh. ‘Oh, but don’t you _understand_?’ I said, and clutched at his shoulders. ‘If I’d tried to say that it would have sounded ridiculous.’

‘Yes, from me it simply sounds pompous and trite,’ he acknowledged, nodded quite sagely, as though mulling over a complex problem. ‘I see your point.’

‘From you it sounds lovely,’ I corrected him, and then felt my face heat all over again. He saw that with amazement, and touched one finger to each cheek as I blushed. ‘Don’t make me say absurd things, Royston, please. I’ll - I’ll say something absolutely ridiculous, something so stupid that you’ll leave me, or have me drawn and quartered on charges of conspiracy to commit murder by mortification.’

‘I think the required legal penalty for murder by mortification is a quarter of your farm’s monthly produce for two years, actually,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘That or hanging at dawn. Perhaps I’ll let you choose.’ He kissed my mouth, hot and gentle. ‘If I spoke aloud even half the silly besotted things I think about you every single day I should never stop talking. I think that in this case, quality is to be prized above volume. Hence the roses. They’re rather better than me tripping over myself to sacrifice my dignity at your feet.’ He got hold of my hands and pulled me up, wrapping the mantle close about our shoulders. I could barely feel the cold anymore: I could barely think of anything other than his skin so near to mine, of the the way he could build ink and paper up into a shining heartsblooded thing. ‘Now, dignity aside, anything besides roses happen today that demands my immediate attention?’ he asked, rubbing my elbows gently. ‘I ask only to be certain that there are no impending state emergencies. I’ve learnt the hard way to be sure of that before taking beautiful boys to bed.’

My cheeks flushed so warm I could hear my own heart beating and beating at my temple. ‘I’ll have you know that Adamo was inspired by your grand gesture and sent poor Laure a wilted handful of daisies,’ I told him, having first cleared my throat. ‘That’s very nearly a state emergency.’

Royston’s eyebrows shot up. ‘He didn’t.’

‘This is based on anecdotal evidence only; I’m led to believe that she destroyed the offending flowers in a fit of pique.’

He made a most unexpected sound. ‘Ha!’ he crowed. ‘Do you know, I think that means that he owes me rather a lot of money. Do you think it’s terribly vindictive of me to have wished this on him?’ He looked better pleased than I had seen him in days. ‘What was I saying before you brought me such wonderful news?’ he asked.

I swallowed, dropped my head to his shoulder. ‘You were taking beautiful boys to bed,’ I murmured, and wetted my lips, smiled: drew a deep breath. ‘Rather callous of you, really, when I’m right here.’

He stilled: put his palms to my waist, his fingertips to the line of my spine. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, softly. ‘I should attend to my duties, then, shouldn’t I?’

I kissed him. In that, at least, I was eloquent enough.


End file.
